Wonderbread
by Quillified
Summary: Everything came together, just in time for it all to fall apart. ((Part 7 of Quilly's February OTP Extravaganza. Humanstuck EriFefSol OT3 bittersweet fluff. For Quilly))


Sollux met Eridan first.

To be perfectly honest, Sollux _punched_ Eridan first. In his defense, they were both pretty hammered and Eridan had been asking for it. Everything from his stupid purple streak to his square-toed hipster shoes screamed "hit me right now". That, and the words leaking from the guy's mouth were, literally, "Punch me in the face! I dare you!"

Well, Sollux Captor had never been one to back down from a challenge. He came away with bruised knuckles and a missing tooth, courtesy of one of Eridan's many tacky rings. They didn't know each other's names, didn't know anything about each other, but Sollux often attributes the combined aftertaste of blood and hangover to the idiot in the purple high-collared coat. At least the tooth wasn't up front.

Sollux met Feferi second.

It was much more amicable, as could be expected; she had a handful of bright pink powder in her hands and threw it right in his face. There was chalk everywhere and colored smudges and glitter all over the place, mixing with the sweat and the light misting rain. He let his eyes linger on her magnificent wavy expanse of hair and cracked a grin so wide he exposed his missing tooth. The end of the color run culminated in numbers exchanged and an admonition: "Call me!"

The pink powder lingered on his scalp for close to a week.

As for how the three of them happened to converge on the same path, well…that was a little harder to explain. Every side was different. Feferi and Eridan were childhood friends, complicatedly close, and as Sollux went from casually texting to dating to moving in with Feferi, it was understood she came with a load of baggage that had an affinity for purple that should've been illegal. To his credit, Eridan tolerated Sollux for the same reason Sollux tolerated Eridan: mutual love and respect for Feferi. It was a shaky peace, but eventually, over multiple oversugared cups of coffee and broken noses and one almighty three-way screaming match over a torn shower curtain…it all came together.

Things were going well, at first; Feferi and Eridan were still complicatedly close, but now Eridan could better try comforting Feferi when her older sister called with her monthly verbal evisceration, now that he had someone else soaking up his bad moods. Sollux and Eridan hated each other still, but that peculiar sort of hate that includes a grudging respect and Sollux holding him when Eridan's father came to call because Eridan needed someone to bleed the venom of his heart out onto before it killed him. Sollux and Feferi settled into each other with the normal pitfalls of a budding relationship, and both were so deliriously happy that Eridan had to sometimes make vomiting noises in the background to signal an overload of sweetness. The three together, though, were an unstoppable force. Sometimes Eridan took the phone from Feferi's hands and turned it off. Sometimes Sollux stepped in front of Eridan's father and calmly asked him to leave. Sometimes Feferi put her hands on both of their chests and all three climbed into bed, a tangle of arms and hair and limbs that breathed itself in, calmly watching the patterns swirl in the ceiling as the hours wiled away.

Such happiness wasn't meant to last.

It started with a customary hit in the chest during a fight from Sollux to Eridan. Feferi got a look at it the next day, and it was large and purple and ugly, spreading farther than Sollux's fist could possibly have caused. It didn't go away.

It was followed with a cough. Just a quiet nagging hitch in his breath, but it got to the point in such a short time that Feferi found him hunched over his scattered paintbrushes, struggling to breathe, coughing in a wet guttural way that wasn't an average cold.

The news wasn't received gracefully. Sollux left the house for a full twelve hours and was dragged back by an uncharacteristically quiet Karkat, who gave his whispered condolences to Feferi while helping her settle him in bed. She blinked and smiled, but saved her tears for Eridan's shoulder. Sollux woke up, hung over, his tongue wedged in the old hole where a tooth once was, tucked into Eridan's thick chest with Feferi curled against his back. He hugged Eridan tight enough to bruise and cried.

The preparations were made. The first treatment, Eridan got violently sick, which was normal (or so they were assured). It was a week or two after they got him home that the storm began, because in the middle of the night Eridan let out a howl fit to shake the foundation and came into Feferi and Sollux's room with trembling fistfuls of his own bronze hair in his hands.

"I can't do this, I don't w-want to do this," he'd blubbered, seizing upon his own hair again and yanking. Sollux climbed out of bed, grabbed Eridan's wrists, and sat him down on the edge of the bed while Feferi went into the kitchen for something.

"The treatment'th gotta do itth work, ED," Sollux said gently. "It'th already in your thythtem. There'th no uthe crying about it now."

Eridan didn't say anything else that was much coherent, just tipped forward and sobbed his heart out into Sollux's neck. Feferi returned from the kitchen with a pair of scissors and clicked on the flickering bathroom light.

Once Eridan was calm again Sollux led him to the bathroom and sat on the floor, arm on his leg and tracing circles on his knee while Feferi clipped Eridan's hair. Longish locks of reddish-brown fairly fell off his head, and when she was done Eridan cautiously ran his hand over it.

"There," Feferi smiled. "You look handsome."

"I suppose it's alright," Eridan grumped. Feferi kissed his forehead. Sollux rocked up on his knees and kissed the spot right behind Eridan's ear.

The rest fell out fairly quickly. All three of them spent more time in the same bed, Sollux's olive tones blending into Eridan's paper-pale blending into Feferi's cool dark skin. Eridan shriveled under the combined weight of sickness and medicine, and soon it was in a hospital room that they spent their time, gold skin to white to brown.

They had their own ways of coping, together and apart. Sollux's smart-aleck comments kept the fight up in Eridan's spirits, but time so long together taught Eridan every meaning in the bruise-dark stains under Sollux's eyes and the lines around his mouth. Feferi's cheeriness brought Eridan hope, but he saw the fear every time she looked at him those first few moments in the room, every day without fail.

The final diagnosis came with Sollux flipping a table and shoving the doctor against the wall, swearing that he'd gotten it wrong. Feferi reacted more calmly, her delicate fingers prying Sollux away and lacing around Eridan's fragile ones. With permission, they took Eridan home.

They lived on the couch after that, watching every pointless movie Eridan had put off seeing and every television show Feferi thought looked distracting. They went out when the air became stifling, to the carnival and the boardwalk. Eridan, wrapped in a towel, walked along the beach and unearthed shells with his toes while Sollux and Feferi followed a short distance behind, arms around each other. They only detached when Eridan's knees wobbled and he sat, hard. Sollux picked him up and carried him, weakly kicking and screaming, back to the car ("I'm fine, Sol! You're being ridiculous!" "Thure I am. Shut up and thtop thquirming.")

It was raining hard outside when Eridan Ampora, tiny and frail now, took his last breath.

Sollux didn't leave this time. Feferi buried herself in his arms and _howled_. He held her and closed his eyes tight, every nerve and cell in his body screaming.

The funeral was stiff with tension as Eridan's father, who hadn't bothered to visit since he found out his son was sick, imperiously took the front pew of the church and spared only a passing glare at Sollux and Feferi by way of greeting. Halfway through the service Sollux's hands tightened around Feferi's. He would've hit Mr. Ampora, but…punching was _their_ thing.

They sat on the grave for over an hour after it was done, muddy knees and muddy hands, arms around each other. Feferi chewed on her lip, then took one of Sollux's hands and pressed it to her midsection. He didn't understand until she smiled. It was watery, but true.

They visited the grave often, but eventually Eridan's empty place was filled. The baby had a warm fuzz of reddish hair and an old scarf for a blanket, and his parents loved him with all their hearts—even the broken parts.

"This is Ari, Eridan," Feferi cooed, bouncing the baby a little as she kneeled in the fresh spring grass. "I know you would've loved him."

"He'th a terror at bedtime," Sollux chuckled, scuffing his feet. "Not unlike thomeone elthe I uthed to know."

A warm breeze blew across the cemetery. Eventually baby Ari started fussing, and Sollux helped her up, pulling the scarf more securely around the baby.

"We'll come again ath thoon ath we can, ED," Sollux said softly, kissing his wife and then his son. "Promithe."

And come they would.

* * *

A/N: Part 7 of my February OTP Extravaganza, and this one was for me. Inspired by Regina Spektor's "Samson" and Cloverstuck by saccharineSylph (please look it up! Is fab! Not written yet, but the parts she has doodled are fantastic!). I apologize for nothing.


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